Many articles about diabetes appear daily, many of them very interesting. The intent here is to make some of these available for others who may not see them or have bypassed them. I will try to comment briefly on those I have grouped or on an individual article. This is not guaranteed to be a daily post, but I hope that this will give you ideas for your own research or blog posts. Please talk to your doctor about medical problems.

12 February 2011

NSAIDs May Not Be Good for Pneumonia

This is from a French study on NSAIDS, but does point out another problem for non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. They say that use of NSAIDs in the early stages of severe lower respiratory tract infection may be causing additional problems for pneumonia patients.

In the pilot study, they observed that NSAID treated patients with community-acquired pneumonia were five times more likely to develop pleural empyema or lung cavitation, that is the this transparent membrane enveloping the lungs and lining the walls of the thoracic cavity. This is compared to patients not receiving NSAIDs.

The authors did say that patients who were taking NSAIDs did not have higher rates of organ failure, nor a greater need for organ support or more severe systemic inflammation while in the ICU, nor did the mortality rare differ between the groups.

They also say these finding suggest that NSAID use at the early stage of community-acquired pneumonia can be associated with less effective compartmentalization of infection, and a blunted systemic response, which may result in a delayed diagnosis and management, and a protracted course of treatment.

About Me

I am enjoying life, despite diabetes type 2. I am retired and enjoying the time I have for writing and photography. I was diagnosed with type 2 on Oct 2003, on oral meds for 4 months and they were doing nothing to really improve my daily readings. By cutting my carbohydrates I received the most improvement, but still not enough. Then I requested insulin, even though I did not like the thought of needles. That brought about the biggest change and A1c's in the lower 6's and upper 5's. Now I am working at maintaining them under 6.0 and hopefully nearer 5.5.